19.9.11

Why do we think of Plato and others as great philosophers?

Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse on the failure of philosophy: 'Some philosophers are nearly unanimously considered great. Plato, Aristotle, and Kant make the short list. But that happy unanimity does not persist when the question is which is right. Of these three, at most one is. Likely none is. And so it is appropriate to ask: How can we consider someone to be a great philosopher yet mostly wrong? By many lights, Plato was wrong about ethics, politics, knowledge, and the basic structure of reality. That is, Plato was wrong on most of the big questions that philosophers try to answer. Yet Plato was a great philosopher. Why?' [Read More]
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